Ian Noe: River Fools & Mountain Saints
Photo by David McClister
The sophomore album from Beattyville, Kentucky’s poetic son, Ian Noe, comes to serve as the next chapter in an unfolding discography that is purposely and deliberately drawing us through the very veins of Appalachian consciousness. River Fools & Mountain Saints, the notably more expansive follow-up to Noe’s 2019 Between The Country, is a collective biography of some of the most beloved and intriguing characters the hollers have to offer. This selection of songs, which could easily also be described as short stories, covers a wide variety of true life inspired personas, from Ian’s own family, to a woman who makes her living slinging weed in the foothills, and a widely known and larger than life local legend. All folks the listener will be eager to grow more intimately familiar with as each track progresses through tales of life, death, and the profound truths we must conquer in between.
The album opens with the drawn out whine of a steel guitar as the first track “Pine Grove (Madhouse)” entices us in through an upbeat and almost bluesy sound. I must admit that upon first listen I was a bit stunned by the light and airy vibe the song offers, a bit of foreshadowing for the overall comparative tone of the album. It was a welcome and pleasant surprise when the more somber and introspective post-pandemic-Ian song I was expecting to hear was a no show, and instead I was forced to abruptly readjust my thinking in the most exciting way. Pine Grove delivers to us the album’s opening scene, a rambunctious and turbulent barroom, alive and crawling with the usual suspects. Despite the mild chaos that is so ingeniously described you can almost feel the vibrations of the basement band under your own feet, our narrator quickly sets his sights on the song’s main character Lorraine, as she makes her way over to chatter on about her children and the long-gone woman she used to be. This progression strikes me as one of the aspects of Noe’s songwriting that is notably unique within the Americana genre currently. He so effortlessly sets scenes that, even though the listener knows they are unfolding somewhere deep in Appalachia, are on some level so universal we can all instantly recognize their familiarity. Further still, through even the most hectic of settings, Noe has a way of introducing us to characters in such an exceptionally intricate style we can often see ourselves and the players in our own lives in them as clear as day. We quickly feel as though we know these folks on a deeper level than is even possible in the few lines we’ve been given.
On the sixth track of the album, “Ballad of a Retired Man,” Noe acquaints us with the life of his own grandfather through the beautifully devastating story of his death. This song is sure to resurface core memories for anyone who has dealt with loss on such a scale, but particularly those who have had the experience of witnessing up close as the loved ones they always assumed to be immortal fade away slowly. The tale begins as the main character receives a call, presumably from his doctor, to say it’s time to give up the job he’s dedicated his life to, in favor of his own health. After seeking solace through a string of ineffective cures and organized religion, he watches himself in the mirror as terminal illness takes hold. Soon we find ourselves in the all too familiar scene, at least in the American south, of a family filing in and out of the house doing all they can to make sure his last days are as easy and comfortable as possible. We’ve all heard the lyrics to hundreds of songs about death, but these lyrics in particular are a vividly striking glimpse into the mind of a person imminently aware of their own mortality:
He stared up through the ceiling at the universe / speeding past old memories in a spirit hearse / He rode the waves and the static of the first TV / He saw the sounds of Fireline and the great Ali / He said I can feel it coming, I’m a nervous wreck / I wonder where I’m going / wonder what comes next
Plugged among those lines are snippets of real life sound bites, offering an even more immersive experience for the listener, and bringing the context to life in the extraordinarily intense way we’ve come to expect from Ian Noe.
The final two tracks of the album speak on a disastrous flood which devastated twenty-one counties of southeast Kentucky in 2020, as a result of extremely heavy rains. “Appalachia Haze” reveals to the listener a sampling of the ways locals dealt with the devastation through the narratives of three seemingly unrelated characters. Some hunkered in place, daydreaming as they waited for the waters to subside, some took to the town in search of a few hours of respite and distraction, while others saw the havoc as a reason to double down on their political allegiances. The tune is a stark reminder that we all process and undertake tragedy in different ways, and sometimes those ways can fall outside the scope of our own best interest. The closing ballad “Road May Flood / It’s A Heartache'' is a first person account of a man expecting the chaos of storms to begin. In a charming and deeply interesting twist, this tune begins as a typically melodic heartbreaker of a country piece, but eventually progresses into an all-enveloping ditty almost reminiscent of the mid-century. It also features a lyrical snippet of Bonnie Tyler’s “It’s A Heartache,” originally released on her 1978 album Natural Force.
River Fools & Mountain Saints is an incredible addition to Ian Noe’s already remarkable catalog, and a further testament to his established approach of never letting a single word go to waste. I personally can not wait to see what the future holds for this once in a generation artist. If you have even a remote interest in raw depictions of Appalachia, or even just character development as an artform, be sure to pick up a copy of this record. It is available now through Ian’s artist website linked below, and via all digital platforms.
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